Chapter 23 The Mysterious Stove

Wu Yan sat in the Cloud Sea Cave of Gushan Mountain, staring at a rusty incense burner on the stone table without blinking.

He picked up this incense burner in a dilapidated temple on a barren mountain west of Gushan Town when he first came to Gushan Town. He has never looked at this incense burner as seriously as he does now.

For more than a year, since he joined the Iron Sword League and became the true disciple of the Pharmacist Feng of Qiancao Valley, this incense burner has been thrown into the Cloud Sea Cave and abandoned. He never thought that there would be anything special about this incense burner. However, today he had an inexplicable strange feeling about this incense burner. Some vague memories of entering Xiaogushan just now became clear again. He remembered that when he used this small incense burner to hold water and drank it in the dilapidated temple, he was no longer hungry and thirsty, and even had better spirits than before. He remembered that when he passed the Buried Sword Valley, he drank the well water in the small stove as wine and passed the second level of the Buried Sword Valley smoothly.

All these things seemed to be irrelevant at first, but now thinking about it, he felt very strange.

In the past six months, he usually took care of the herbs in the medicine field and used an old wooden ladle to sprinkle water on the herbs. The wooden ladle was left by two herbal farmers. Just yesterday, when he was fetching water, he accidentally threw the wooden ladle into the pond. He couldn't find a handy tool for sprinkling water, so he thought of the incense burner he had abandoned in the Yunhai Cave.

If the wooden ladle hadn't been lost, he might never have discovered the secret of the incense burner. This incense burner might have been left in the Yunhai Cave forever, until the next person found it, or buried deep in the mountains, and continued to be covered in dust.

In just one day, the place in the medicine field where the incense burner scooped water yesterday, the herbs grew significantly better than other places, and it looked like they had grown for more than ten days at once. The place where the purple sun grass grew happened to be the place where he threw the incense burner after sprinkling water yesterday.

Wu Yan was already 80% convinced that the change of Ziyang grass was related to the incense burner.

After careful observation and research, Wu Yan found that the incense burner had some obvious changes compared to yesterday.

He brought the incense burner to his eyes and looked at it carefully again. This change was more obvious after a closer look.

The green rust on the incense burner was much less than yesterday, and in some places, the green rust had completely disappeared, revealing the dark green outer wall. Wu Yan's face moved, and he found a dagger and carefully peeled off the green rust on the incense burner from the outer and inner walls of the incense burner bit by bit, and piled them together.

Half an hour later, a quaint and elegant peculiar stove appeared in front of Wu Yan.

Wu Yan's eyes were deeply attracted by this mysterious stove and couldn't extricate himself. The shape of the stove was simple and peculiar, with a round outside and a square inside, three legs below, no ears on the top, but a delicate lid. The whole stove was dark green, and I don't know what material it was made of. Wu Yan was sure that this stove could never be made of bronze. He didn't even know what material it was.

The material of the furnace looked like neither gold nor stone, neither wood nor bamboo. Just now, when Wu Yan used a dagger to scrape off the green rust on the furnace, he found that it was not green rust at all, nor was it rust growing from the furnace. It looked like some strange green hard soil. I don't know how this green soil attached to the furnace. In order to scrape off this green soil, Wu Yan was exhausted and sweating all over.

What shocked and delighted Wu Yan was that no matter how hard he scraped the soil on the furnace, he couldn't leave even the slightest trace on the furnace. The outer wall of the furnace was still smooth and round, emitting a faint dark green light. If you don't look carefully, it's really hard to find.

There are ten cloud patterns engraved on the round outer wall of the furnace. There are two strange symbols that are not sure whether they are words or patterns, which are engraved in the center of the five cloud patterns, forming a very beautiful plum blossom pattern. These cloud patterns and symbols seemed to have grown from the outer wall, and they looked so natural, elegant, and simple.

This palm-sized stove was definitely not an incense burner. Wu Yan couldn't understand why it appeared in that dilapidated temple and was used as an incense burner.

Wu Yan was more excited than ever before. He decided to study what this mysterious stove was and what it was used for.

He did it right away. Wu Yan put the stove in a cloth bag and hid it close to his body. He thought about it, and then collected the green hard soil scraps scraped from the stove. There was a ball as big as a baby's fist. He put the green hard soil scraps in a small cloth bag and kept it close to his body.

After packing everything up, Wu Yan returned to Qiancao Valley. He went into the book collection room of Master Feng and began to read Master Feng's books frantically.

Wu Yan seemed to be possessed by a demon. After diving into the library of Pharmacist Feng, he spent ten days reading all the books in Pharmacist Feng's collection.

Ten days later, Wu Yan came out of Pharmacist Feng's study with a dishevelled look and a look of disappointment on his face.

Although Pharmacist Feng's collection of books was very rich, covering all kinds of religions and even some absurd books about gods and ghosts, there was no record of the small stove and the green soil.

Wu Yan still didn't give up, so he went out of the valley and went to the Buddhist Scripture Collection Hall of the Iron Sword League. He doesn't care about the people around him. Because of the order of Li Ruoxu, the leader of the Iron Sword Alliance, he is the freest person in the valley. Except for a few core forbidden areas of the Iron Sword Alliance that are inaccessible, he is free everywhere else. In and out. Unfortunately, a month later, he read through all the books in the Sutra Collection Institute, but still gained nothing.

Wu Yan returned to Qiancao Valley in despair, and closed the valley again to start research.

Wu Yan walked to the medicine field, carefully walked around the medicine field, selected all the dozen herbs needed for the prescription, and then transplanted all the herbs together. He carefully buried a little bit of the green soil under each herb. Then he sat cross-legged next to him, guarding these herbs, and began to practice the nameless formula.

The next day, the first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to look at the dozen herbs transplanted yesterday.

"As expected. That nine-leaf purple sunflower plant actually absorbed the green soil attached to the mysterious stove, and it grew directly from the seedling stage to the mature stage in one day. It was fully mature and could be used as medicine. used."

Wu Yan touched his chin, looked at a dozen fully mature herbs, and said to himself excitedly.

After thinking about it, Wu Yan carefully uprooted all the dozens of herbs, shook off the soil on the roots, washed them and dried them in the pool next to them, and put them into the cloth bag containing the purple sun grass.

After a while, Wu Yan filled a bucket with water and walked to the medicine field. He took out the small stove, opened the lid on the stove, scooped out water with the small stove, selected a few herbs that were helpful to his current practice, and started watering them.

After pouring a bucket of water, Wu Yan put the small stove away, threw the bucket aside, and returned to Gushan Yunhai Cave.

…

Wu Yan took out the nine-leaf purple sunflower root and the dozen herbs and placed them side by side on the stone table in front of him. Next to it were an old jade mortar and pestle used for pounding medicine, and a prescription.

Wu Yan brought the prescription in front of him, read it carefully again, thought about it, picked up a dozen washed herbs, threw them into the stone mortar, and started pounding them. Half an hour later, Wu Yan wiped the sweat from his head, looked at the green liquid in the stone mortar, and let out a sigh of relief. He carefully poured the medicinal solution into a small bowl, then washed the stone mortar and set it aside.

Wu Yan breathed a sigh of relief, sat cross-legged on the ground, meditated, closed his eyes and rested. After resting for a while, he picked up the nine-leaf purple sunflower plant on the stone table and prepared to start pounding the nine-leaf purple sunflower grass according to the method provided in the prescription. Suddenly, Wu Yan looked at the Nine-leaf Ziyang Grass in his hand, and his expression became extremely ugly.